Our Story

FERAL CHILDE™ is the collaboration of Alice Wu and Moriah Carlson, who both come from a fine arts background.  Feral Childe's drawings form the basis of the collection's textile prints, wry construction details, and absurdist accessories. Feral Childe combines thoughtful choice of materials and attention to quality construction to make smart, wearable silhouettes for forward-thinking women. Feral Childe is proudly manufactured in New York City's Garment Center.

History

When Alice and Moriah first met, it was over a sink full of broken eggshells they were hired to wash for an art installation. The fast friends imagined creating a compact wardrobe for their new lives in New York. In their next day jobs, each worked in an office and faxed the other drawings and ideas every morning. In their off-hours, the pair scoured downtown for uncommon fabrics, tried their creations on each other, and draped and slashed at the clothes until they were satisfied. The pair made up stories to go along with the results of this wild and untamed creative process and called it FERAL CHILDE. Taking their outfits to the streets, passersby stopped them on subways and in stairwells, asking where they could buy such clothes. Feral Childe's playful silhouettes and curiously elegant tailoring quickly gained a devoted following, at home and abroad, among young and old, traditionalists and renegades.  Since 2002, the duo has presented their work in the form of art installations, performances, pop-ups and lectures in diverse venues such as MAK Center/Schindler House, High Desert Test Sites, Santa Fe Art Institute, Parrish Art Museum, SCOPE Art Fair, and as faraway as Japan, Denmark, Qatar, and Canada. Feral Childe began producing seasonal collections, distributed to over 150 independent boutiques all over the world. There is no typical Feral Childe retailer; each buyer develops a signature edit of the season's new prints and bodies so that each encounter with Feral Childe is truly unique. In December 2015, after 13 years and more than 22 collections and countless special projects, presentations and performances, Feral Childe closed its doors. You can read the goodbye letter here.

Our Values

Every Feral Childe garment fulfills two or more of these standards:

  • use of natural fibers such as organic cotton, hemp, Tencel, Cupro, linen and silk
  • use of upcycled fabrics (ex. batting made from recycled PET soda bottles)
  • use of mill-end fabrics (also referred to as reclaimed, vintage deadstockoverstock; these are production leftovers from other designers and manufacturers, and the source of our wool coating, nylon mesh, or novelty weaves)
  • manufacture in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and the Garment Center, New York City 
  • conscientious application of printing and dyeing (less water-intensive digital printing for the silks; water-based silk screening; low impact dyes; use of domestic printers (Los Angeles, San Francisco) and dyehouses in Marin County and in Brooklyn)
  • responsible disposal of production waste: leftover yardage is offered to other independent designers, and remnants are sent to a textile recycling facility, donated to crafters and schools, or recycled into accessories and trim for future collections
  • use of vintage deadstock buttons or those made from natural materials such as shell or tagua nut
  • produce to order based on our wholesale orders, to avoid overstock and excess inventory; this way, you are also guaranteed that each Feral Childe piece is part of a limited run.
We limit our use of polybags and plastic hangers, reusing these as well as our packing and shipping materials. We print just enough hangtags, catalogs, and marketing collateral, with recycled paper whenever possible. 
Feral Childe is committed to ethical business practices, and provides sourcing and manufacturing information upon request to our customers. We carefully distribute only to retailers we feel share our values. We support our communities by participating in educational outreach, teaching workshops, and sharing our experiences and resources with others.